Post Art
48 pages, color
Publisher: g-mk| galerija miroslav kraljevic, 2006
Text: Jasna Jakšić
Design: Ruta
Editor: Ivana Bago
Edition: 500
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In Your Mailbox, Especially For You!
Jasna Jakšić
It has been over twenty months since ®eljko Badurina began amusing his address book audience by regularly sending them original art postcards. Formally, we are dealing with mail or post art, art procedure in which letters, cards or postcards are distributed by post to a greater number of addresses. The Futurists (1) are considered to be its initiators (although Wikipedia mentions also Cleopatra in this context), while the true revolution of mail art happened in the Fluxus ruffled-like sixties and seventies of the preceding century. The musealization of the phenomenon has already taken place, its commercial potentials have been tested, and in today\’s era of mass electronic correspondence and communication, the tangible form of mail art retains a nostalgic aura. Nonetheless, unpretentiousness and directness, relatively cheap production, as well as the humoristic potentials of the media, still keep this type of artistic procedure a rewarding field of artistic experiment. Badurina uses a less common term post art: along with the fact that it is more comprehensible in the context of Croatian language, this anglophone syntagm contains also a potential ambiguity, referring simultaneoulsy to „post art“ but also to what follows after (the end?) of art.
The home made art postcards of ®eljko Badurina are various combinations of image and text, which either refer to the local and global concerns of the art world or present a reaction or commentary on issues of daily politics and similar events, regularly those that had previously already been „devoured“ in the media. Among the most impressive are those that put additional emphasis or reinterpret globally relevant or art-related issues. On an image resembling newspaper caricatures (a series of reactions to the anti-ecumenical speech of Joseph Ratzinger), Badurina edited a reproduction of Maurizio Catellan\’s controversial sculpture, replacing the figure of the late pope John Paul II with Ratzinger, exposing him to a meteor attack.
The first postcard arrived in the form of an Easter card A.D. 2005: a gaudy figure of the Saviour is adorned with a caption „Eternity“ written on the red tunic, signed by the famous American designer Calvin Klein. Branded eternity descented from the perfume bottles onto the prefiguration of the holy chest. The Easter card set the coordinates for further development of POST-ART: a fast reaction to immediate reality and opportune commentary on ongoing events, playing with more or less recognizable pop-icons and the language of mass communication media. The postcards that ensued confirmed the presumption that POST-ART is governed by spontaneous inspiration, while at the same time it was important to keep the aura of unpredictability. However, since the number of post-arts has reached a rounded figure of 50, it is already possible to devide them in several groups or at least track some of the constant lines of inspirations to the artist.
After a bizarre amalgam of the sacred and profane in a kitsch mode, the artist promoted himself into a brand, at least one of local significance, in a postcard that reproduced one of the rarely recognizable products of Croatia where, instead of the known caption „Bajadera“, on the chocolate cover we read – „Badurina“. From transcendence to art over brand, and finally to art that itself became a brand, embodied in the third sent postcard in the figure of Marijan Crtalić. The vibrant Croatian artist, in accordance with his almost cult status in the local scene (but also close friendship with the artist) was a protagonist on various postcards with art references. One postcard quoted a statement by him: „Art hasn\’t even begun yet“, manifesting a complete reversal of the „end of the art“ thesis. In other postcards which, in accordance with the „post“ (2) approach, questioned the issues of art and its procedures and/or postulates, Crtalić appeared also as an art victim, in the company of the film director Goran Dević. Both were depicted as casualties found under a huge painting by Edo Murtić (3), with the red-colored trace of action painting under their bodies. The figure of Crtalić, seen through an x-ray perspective, appeared also on another postcard: Artist\’s head – suggesting, incidentally or not, that being an artist was considered similar to being an „emptyhead“.
In one of the most humorous references to contemporary local politics Badurina and Crtalić appeared in a brotherly embrace, with captions „Half-Serb“ and „Half-Croat“ written on their T-shirts, implying the existence of the other, „undesirable“ half which, in the case of both artists, is a biographical fact. Representing themselves, with only one segment of the genetical national heritage exposed, both artists appeared as complimentary halfs of the „unesirable fruit“ of the so-called mixed marriages – which, in the local context, is represented by a person which is „half Serb-half Croatian“.
The political context was as a rule woven into a rebus of popular culture phenomena: the warholian figure of Michael Jackson, in the midst of the hype about the child abuse case, became „Hero, not a Criminal“, just like the recently created nationalist pop icon embodied in the character of Ante Gotovina.(4) In the frame of the exhibition dedicated to Nikola Tesla at Galerija Nova, local pop stars – „black knights“ Thompson and škoro (5), not really famous for their sympathies towards the Serb minority that Tesla also belonged to, were marked with a common denominator: „Unplugged“, which left them both, at least symbolically, without electricity. However, Badurina wasn\’t reaching into the world of pop culture in order to send a political statements only: feeling the pulse of the nation, he touched upon the last two Croatian presentations at the Eurovision contest and sent a small Easter rebus in which, behind a usual Croatian male name „Dražen“ and an image of a bunny-toy, we discovered another great (although not so easy for everyone to recall) name of the local pop music scene. (6)
Catching up with the yuppy jargon in transitional Croatia was ironized by an appropriate illustration: in the Teambuilding postcard, a found statement defining the favourite corporate model of stealing private time is counterposed with an image displaying orgies. The problems of global economy were reflected also in the most consumer-oriented of all holidays – Christmas. Last Christmas we received a card with freshly baked „Nike“ cookies, and this Christmas it was a tiny Santa Clause whose home, in spite of all his Sibirian and American addresses, is still, in most cases, the People\’s Republic of China. There was also a series of spontaneous reactions to recent events, often combined with the media reality, so the familiar image of a man that survived the London Underground terrorist attack, with the caption „Survivor“, alluded also to the infamously extinguished reality show.
However, the main preoccupation remained what is closest to the author and his POST-ART address book members: the art world. There we found, for example, a globally significant pun such as the paraphrase „In art we trust“, first written on dollar bills, and later placed in an opposing context of the almost Sisyphus-like persistence in painting and faith of the artist Ivica Malčić. Local metaphors were present in pseudosociological diagrams and graphicons, inspired by the massmedia hype for classifying sexual habits of ordinary citizens. Badurina presented the results of a ficticious research of masturbation habits within artistic and curatorial circles, with all ambivalent connotations the term implies. In order to overcome their frustrations, this small and incestuous artist/curators community was later offered a solution in the form of a new-age prayer, ironizing a whole scope of expectations. After playing with the subject of capital flow on several occasions, Badurina reached for the world of serious advertizing, clearly stating to a specific target group that by buying a certain product and increasing the profit of a company owned by a rarely beloved collectioner in the contemporary scene, they also supported contemporary art. (7)
The „domestic artist“, with the price of 45 kuna / kilo of live weight, could, as we saw, appropriate the success formula of Dimitrije Popović (8) (even in its body art version), advocate the purchase of works by local artists in Croatian museums, or humbly kneal in front of the probably most significant symbol of power in Croatia – the church. It is hardly likely, however, that we would run into a prime time TV-show analyzing the state of the arts today, surely not in the „Latinica show“ (9) – maybe only in the „General Practice Show“ (10), after which, according to Badurina, you would find yourself in need of emergency intervention. Therefore, we could only endulge in imagining what it would really be like if the Croatian prime-minister, instead of presenting a painting by Charles Bilich (11) as a gift at the recent meeting with US president, brought a piece from the Foxy Lady cycle by the old America fan Tomislav Gotovac (12). Or we could call upon the Virgin Mary to pray upon the construction of the new Contemporary Art Museum building. Finally, beyond all these concerns, there is a healthy, ironic and populistic attitude which, instead of the pine aroma of a car refreshener would search for „ćevapi with onion“ (13) and instead of the hardly digestable Zagreb Art Salon – for the „Zagreb stake“ (14).
The common-sense opportunism could only be contrasted by a mythic figure of the artist-shaman communicating with the primordial natural forces. But, in Badurina\’s interpretation of the performance I like America and America likes me, Joseph Beuys is cloaked by a blanket, in the company of a white terrier who participates in the event only through photo-montage. In any case, more sincere than the late charismatic who was „taming“ a wild animal which had previously been already trained for a film prodution, i.e. (God forbid!) a spectacle. In the unpretentious postcard format, Badurina\’s POST-ART deftly maneuvres between satirical, almost newspaper-like comments, sharp gags referring to the art scene but also a gentle, almost elegic fantasy with which Kožarić\’s sculpture of the Landed Sun, which had in its history changed several locations in the public sapace of Zagreb, would finally, by humble means, be returned to the anti-gravitational condition.
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(1) Maurizio Scudiero: Futurismi postali. Rovereto: Longo Editore, 1986
(2) „in the terms Postavangard and Postmodernism, the prefix „post“ doesn\’t note continuationa and evolution of the dominant style, paradigm of art or civilization era, but its completion, autocritical consideration, revision and entering into a transitional (transhistorical) period between a closed historical cycle and a future one that yet remains to be defined.“ M. šuvaković: Dictionary of Contemporary Art. Zagreb: Horetzky, 2005.
(3) Edo Murtić (1921 – 2005), a famous Croatian Abstract Expressionist painter (t.n.)
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(4) A former Croatian Army general, indicted in 2001 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for war crimes, commited during the 1991-1995 war in Croatia. His supporters flooded Croatia with posters showing his image with the caption “Hero, not a Criminal” (t.n.)
(5) Nationalistically oriented Croatian pop singers (t.n.)
(6) The name behind the rebus is another pop singer Dražen Zečić, whose last name in Croatian means „little rabbit“. (t.n.)
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(7) The postcard refers to the company / art collection Filip Trade and its owner Tomislav Kličko.
(8) Another well-known and „representational“ Croatian painter (t.n.)
(9) A popular prime time talk show on national TV dealing with important local political and social issues. (t.n.)
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(10) A new talk show where three senior Croatian intellectuals meet on a weekly basis to discuss various issues of „general“ significance. (t.n.)
(11) Australian conventional kitsch-mode painter of Croatian origin (t.n.)
(12) Croatian provocative conceptual artist, performer and film-maker (t.n.)
(13) Regional minced meat specialty (t.n.)
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(14) Typical local meat specialty (t.n.)
